Michael Lenox

Michael J. Lenox is a faculty senior fellow at the Miller Center. He is a University Professor at the University of Virginia and is also academic co-director of the Democracy and Capitalism Lab. His primary appointment is as the Tayloe Murphy Professor of Business Administration at UVA's Darden School of Business. He also holds an appointment as a professor of public policy at the Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy.

In 2026, Lenox served as interim dean of the Darden School. From 2023 to 2025, he served as the inaugural Donna & Richard Tadler University Chair of Entrepreneurship and led a new pan-university initiative, UVA Innovates, as a special advisor to the provost. From 2016 to 2023, he served as the senior associate dean and chief strategy officer for the Darden School. From 2008 to 2016, he served as Darden’s associate dean of innovation programs and academic director of the Batten Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. He helped found and served as the inaugural president of the multiple-university Alliance for Research on Corporate Sustainability.

Before arriving at UVA in 2008, Lenox served as a tenured associate professor at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business and as an assistant professor at New York University's Stern School of Business. He has been a visiting professor at Stanford University, Harvard University, Oxford University, and IMD. 

Lenox earned his PhD in technology management and policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a BS and MS in systems engineering from the University of Virginia.

Lenox's research has appeared in numerous refereed academic publications and is cited frequently in major media outlets including The New York Times, the Financial Times, and The Economist. He is the author of five books including his 2023 release, Strategy in the Digital Age, from Stanford University Press. Since 2021, he has been the co-host of the podcast “Good Disruption.”

In 2009, Lenox was recognized as a Faculty Pioneer by the Aspen Institute and as the top strategy professor under 40 by the Strategic Management Society. In 2011, he was named one of the top 40 business professors under 40 by Poets & Quants. In 2025, he received the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Academy of Management for his contributions to research on organizations and the natural environment.

Lenox's primary expertise is in the domain of technology strategy and policy. He is broadly interested in the role of innovation and entrepreneurship for economic growth and firm competitive success. In particular, he explores the business strategy and public policy drivers of the direction of innovative activity. Lenox also has a longstanding interest in the interface between business strategy and public policy as it relates to the natural environment. His work includes the books Can Business Save the Earth? (2018) and The Decarbonization Imperative (2021), both from Stanford University Press.